Cool Redskins Claim Revenge With Quiet Class

Warner Hessler

PHILADELPHIA — Richie Petitbon was in no hurry to leave the visitor's dressing room under Veterans Stadium late Saturday afternoon.

Neither was Larry Peccatiello, Jim Hanifan or other members of the Washington Redskins coaching staff.

Instead of dressing in a private room and slipping out a side door, the assistant coaches purposely walked though the hundreds of reporters looking for quotes in the players' dressing area and allowed themselves to be trapped in the sea of tape recorders, video recorders and notebooks.

They weren't looking for attention and praise, mind you. Assistant coaches are among the most nameless, faceless and least egotistical people in professional sports.

"If you want to fall off the face of the earth, be an assistant coach," former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann once said.

But on this day, Petitbon, Peccatiello, Hanifan and others weren't going to slip out the back door quietly and pretend nothing special had happened.

What the Redskins accomplished earlier in the afternoon was truly one of the sweeter moments in an assistant coach's career. Washington's 20-6 victory against the Philadelphia Eagles in the first round of the National Football League playoffs was not the kind of game that will be forgotten in a few days or even a few years.

What the Redskins did was avenge one of the more embarrassing and humiliating moments in team history.

Eight weeks ago, they limped, crawled and were carried out of Veterans Stadium following a 28-14 defeat on national television, a three-hour nightmare in which they were physically beaten and verbally abused.

Eight weeks later, they quietly rode back into town in their white hats, methodically destroyed the villains and quietly rode out.

Such stories are not uncommon in sports, but the classy and complete manner in which this one was achieved was a bit unusual.

Several weeks ago, when it became apparent that Washington was going to get another shot at Philadelphia in the playoffs, the coaching staff quietly went to work creating a proper attitude among the players.

There was no need to push the revenge angle because the newspapers repeated the taunts the Redskins heard on the night of Nov. 12 on a daily basis.

The coaches created an attitude of class, calm and maturity. Their team was going to go about this the right way. They weren't going to forget that humbling night eight weeks ago, but neither were they going to let their desire for revenge be a distraction.

"If we had read too many papers and not had a lot of direction from the coaches, we would have come in here ready to kill people and wouldn't have gotten the job done in the game," said free safety Todd Bowles.

What the assistant coaches did was channel the players' anger into a positive focus and devise some of the best game plans of their careers.

They devised some new pass-rushing schemes with the linemen and linebackers that produced five sacks and kept constant pressure on quarterback Randall Cunningham.

They used a rover coverage scheme with Bowles that limited the Eagles' wide receivers to one reception for nine yards.

On offense, they tempered Philadelphia's all-out pass rushes with a bootleg rollout scheme that allowed quarterback Mark Rypien to roll away and find time to throw.

And, for the first time since October, running back Earnest Byner was used as a receiver instead of a blocker against blitzing linebackers. His seven catches for 77 yards keyed both touchdown drives.

The game plans were creative and effective. That was one well-prepared team out there Saturday.

But it would have all gone to waste had the Redskins entered the stadium with blood in their eyes and murder in their hearts.

They were calm before the game, businesslike during it and professional when it was over.

When it looked like Bowles was enjoying himself too much during the postgame interviews, defensive tackle Tim Johnson walked over and said, "Don't break the code, brother."

The code, stressed by the coaches during the week and emphasized in several players-only meetings at night, was to win the game and let the media do the talking for them.

"We don't talk a lot," Johnson said. "... We play hard and respect our opponent. We beat him on the field and leave him alone when it's over."

"This game was really sweet because a lot of pride was riding on it," Petitbon said, "but that's all I want to say about it."

"This is a different team than the Eagles," said defensive end Charles Mann. "We came to play, not talk."

The victory was a triumph of creativity, maturity and class.

It was the kind everybody wanted to savor just a little bit longer, including the assistant coaches.